We Dont Chat

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What's going on?

The US president has no time for Chinas late-night cat gifs: he issued new orders last Friday banning US companies from doing business with WeChat and TikTok.

What does this mean?

The orders which come into effect 45 days from now are the latest attempt by the US to curb Chinas power in global technology. America, after all, has a long and growing list of blacklisted Chinese companies that mainly operate in the tech industry.

Now it seems TikTok-owner ByteDance and WeChat-owner Tencent are next. As if things werent already bad enough for TikTok: the video-sharing network has been in the spotlight since the US threatened to ban its American operations earlier this month. And to make matters worse, Instagram recently launched its own video feed which might remind TikTok of the time the photo-sharing app knocked Snapchat off the top spot

Why should I care?

For markets: What an emotional rollercoaster.
Shares in Tencent one of Chinas most valuable tech companies fell as much as 10% on the news. But it recovered half those losses after the US said the ban would only apply to WeChat, rather than the tech conglomerate as a whole. That still wasnt enough to stop a knock-on effect on some other high-profile Asian tech stocks, mind you and the impact dragged down markets across the region.

The bigger picture: Is this thing on?
WeChat isnt exactly used by many people in the US, but the ban would have wide business implications because its so important to communicating with Chinese partners and customers (tweet this). In fact, its almost impossible to function in China without WeChat since so many people use WeChat over email and text messages. And with WhatsApp blocked in the country, theres no real alternative either…

Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.

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